There's an article in the current Harvard Magazine on the subject of caregiving. (I've been thinking about caregiving quite a bit the last while, because I've been the recipient of a lot of it, having been bedridden for a couple of weeks with a slipped, or herniated, or ruptured disc). Taking care of me has been a chore, performed with great grace and generosity by Mrs. Dr. M, by Dr. M's oldest son, and by his son's wonderful wife.
The article on caregiving begins with a striking, unsettling anecdote.
In 1966, as a visiting medical student at a London teaching hospital, I interviewed a husband and wife, in their early twenties, who had recently experienced a truly calamitous health catastrophe. On their wedding night, in their first experience of sexual intercourse, a malformed blood vessel in the husband’s brain burst, leaving him with a disabling paralysis of the right side of his body. Stunned and guilt-ridden, the couple clutched hands and cried silently as they shared their suffering with me. My job was to get the neurological examination right and diagnose where the rupture had taken place.
The author's point is that a diagnosis is incomplete in the absence of compassion, not only in this most dramatic case but in more ordinary occasions.
It has been difficult for me to keep my mind off this traumatized young couple — stepping enthusiastically and it would appear naively into a first adventure in sexual expression only to be overwhelmed by an out-of-the-blue horror. It's a sorrow beyond ordinary sorrow. I wish that the author had added a paragraph in which he reported that the young man recovered, that surgery corrected the defect, and that the couple went on to live a long and satisfying life. I fear that the absence of such a report means that there was no good news. Starting with an aneurysm in the brain, it's easy to descend into scenarios of doom.
Ah life! So many potential disasters out there, so many bullets to dodge.
Even while I'm lying here, unable to get around without pain, I know that I've lived a most fortunate life. No intercourse-related aneurysms, for one thing.
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